Two main arguments are being put forward these days about state-sponsored displays of the Ten Commandments. The first is that they are the basis of Anglo-Saxon law, leading to ancient British law, leading to American law. The second is that sometimes the displays of them are purely decorative, part of a larger display of other legal and/or religious symbols (as is seen in the Supreme Court chamber itself).

The decorative/art argument is a reasonable one, and probably the one the Supreme Court will adopt with relation to the Texas display. As the nations' most competent word police, conservatives have apparently focus-group tested the word "museum" and found that it works best to frame this argument (expect to see more of that word soon) and in the real context of a real museum the argument would have legitimacy. Religion - which the Ten Commandments symbolize - is, after all, a very real part of the history of America, for better or worse (just ask the women hanged as witches for over a century in Massachusetts).

But the real issue here is a "camel's nose under the tent" plan of religious conservatives and the new American Christian Taliban to convince the American people that the Ten Commandments are the very basis of American law, and thus should be both displayed in public places and taught in our schools.

The next step from this argument is the assertion that religion is the basis of America itself, and that twisted half-truth that the Founders and Framers did not write a "wall of separation between church and state" into the First Amendment of the Constitution. And then, conservatives will say, religion should inform the decisions of government; government should be subsidizing religion (as it is already with tax breaks and "faith based initiatives"); and religion-based legal perspectives (particularly on issues like abortion, euthanasia, and homosexuality) are necessary, since the basis of American law is religion.

Thomas Jefferson and John Adams disagreed.

In a February 10, 1814 letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, Jefferson addressed the question directly. "Finally, in answer to Fortescue Aland's question why the Ten Commandments should not now be a part of the common law of England we may say they are not because they never were." Anybody who asserted that the Ten Commandments were the basis of American or British law was, Jefferson said, mistakenly believing a document put forth by Massachusetts and British Puritan zealots which was "a manifest forgery."

The reason was simple, Jefferson said. British common law, on which much American law was based, existed before Christianity had arrived in England.

"Sir Matthew Hale [a conservative advocate for church/state "cooperation"] lays it down in these words," wrote Jefferson to Cooper: "'Christianity is parcel of the laws of England.'"

But, Jefferson rebuts in his letter, it couldn't be. Just looking at the timeline of English history demonstrated it was impossible:

"But Christianity was not introduced till the seventh century; the conversion of the first Christian king of the Heptarchy having taken place about the year 598, and that of the last about 686. Here, then, was a space of two hundred years, during which the common law was in existence, and Christianity no part of it...."

Not only was Christianity - or Judaism, or the Ten Commandments - not a part of the foundation of British and American common law, Jefferson noted, but those who were suggesting it was were promoting a lie that any person familiar with the commonly-known history of England would recognize as absurd.

"We might as well say that the Newtonian system of philosophy is a part of the common law, as that the Christian religion is," wrote Jefferson. "...In truth, the alliance between Church and State in England has ever made their judges accomplices in the frauds of the clergy; and even bolder than they are."

In a January 24, 1814 letter to John Adams, Jefferson went through a detailed lawyer's brief to show that the entire idea that the laws of both England and the United States came from the Ten Commandments rests on a single man's mistranslation in 1658, often repeated, and totally false.

"It is not only the sacred volumes they [the churches] have thus interpolated, gutted, and falsified, but the works of others relating to them, and even the laws of the land," he wrote. "Our judges, too, have lent a ready hand to further these frauds, and have been willing to lay the yoke of their own opinions on the necks of others; to extend the coercions of municipal law to the dogmas of their religion, by declaring that these [Ten Commandments] make a part of the law of the land."

It was a long-running topic of agreement between Jefferson and John Adams, who, on September 24, 1821, wrote to Jefferson noting their mutual hope that America would embrace a purely secular, rational view of what human society could become:

"Hope springs eternal," wrote Adams of the preachers trying to take over government. "Eight millions of Jews hope for a Messiah more powerful and glorious than Moses, David, or Solomon; who is to make them as powerful as he pleases. Some hundreds of millions of Mussulmans expect another prophet more powerful than Mahomet, who is to spread Islamism over the whole earth. Hundreds of millions of Christians expect and hope for a millennium in which Jesus is to reign for a thousand years over the whole world before it is burnt up. The Hindoos expect another and final incarnation of Vishnu, who is to do great and wonderful things, I know not what."

But, Adams noted in that letter to Jefferson, the hope for a positive future for America was - in his mind and Jefferson's - grounded in rationality and government, not in religion. "You and I hope for splendid improvements in human society, and vast amelioration in the condition of mankind," he wrote. "Our faith may be supposed by more rational arguments than any of the former."

As Thomas Jefferson wrote in a June 5, 1824 letter to Major John Cartwright, "Our Revolution commenced on more favorable ground [than the foundation of the Ten Commandments]. It presented us an album on which we were free to write what we pleased. We had no occasion to search into musty records, to hunt up royal parchments, or to investigate the laws and institutions of a semi-barbarous ancestry. We appealed to those of nature, and found them engraved on our hearts."

After all, only two of the Ten Commandments have long been enshrined in our law - don't kill and don't steal - and those have been part of human society since the stone age (and are even today part of the rules of "stone age" cultures, who have never had contact with modern religion). These two are clearly part of "nature's law," as Jefferson often noted.

Thomas Jefferson was perhaps the most outspoken of the Founders who saw religious leaders seizing political power by claiming religion as the basis of American law to be a naked threat to American democracy.

One of his most well known quotes is carved into the stone of the awe-inspiring Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC: "I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny imposed upon the mind of man."

Modern religious leaders who aspire to political power often cite it as proof that Jefferson was a Bible-thumping Christian.

What's missing from the Jefferson memorial (and almost all who cite the quote), however, is the context of that statement, the letter and circumstance from which it came.

When Jefferson was Vice President, just two months before the election of 1800 in which he would become President, he wrote to his good friend, the physician Benjamin Rush, who started out as an orthodox Christian and ended up, later in his life, a Deist and Unitarian. Here, in a most surprising context, we find the true basis of one of Jefferson's most famous quotes:

"DEAR SIR, - ... I promised you a letter on Christianity, which I have not forgotten," Jefferson wrote, noting that he knew to discuss the topic would add fuel to the fires of electoral politics swirling all around him. "I do not know that it would reconcile the genus irritabile vatum [the angry poets] who are all in arms against me. Their hostility is on too interesting ground to be softened. "The delusion ...on the [First Amendment] clause of the Constitution, which, while it secured the freedom of the press, covered also the freedom of religion, had given to the clergy a very favorite hope of obtaining an establishment of a particular form of Christianity through the United States; and as every sect believes its own form the true one, every one perhaps hoped for his own, but especially the Episcopalians and Congregationalists.

"The returning good sense of our country threatens abortion to their hopes, and they [the preachers] believe that any portion of power confided to me [such as being elected President], will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly: for I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. But this is all they have to fear from me: and enough too in their opinion."

Let us hope that the Supreme Court will affirm that decorative displays of the Ten Commandments - or any religious iconography - are fine in the context of art or, as Sandra Day O'Connor said in a previous decision, as "ceremonial Deism." This will probably allow for the display in the Texas case, as they're part of a much larger display of Texas historical icons, and will also prevent both conservative hysteria or anti-religious witch-hunts in which every last symbol of religion is scraped away from our institutions. (The Greek goddess John Ashcroft covered up with fabric is, after all, an ancient religious symbol. We need rationality here.)

But, more importantly, let's hope that the Court will take this opportunity to affirm the absolute separation of church and state in the United States, and to note, as Jefferson so well pointed out and as this nation's Founding generation so well knew, that the Ten Commandments have nothing whatsoever to do with American law, or even its history. And, thus, they need not be displayed as major, focal-point monuments on public property (Judge Moore/Alabama); in classrooms next to the flag (a better display would be that subversive document, the Declaration of Independence, or the Constitution of the United States [which never once mentions "God"]); or taught in our schools (next on the Christian Taliban hit-list).

History - and our nation's Founders - teach us that religion is best left to religion, and governance best left to a government answerable to We The People, rather than to Moses, Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, or their self-appointed contemporary spokesmen.

Thom Hartmann (thom at thomhartmann.com) is a Project Censored Award-winning best-selling author and host of a nationally syndicated daily progressive talk show. www.thomhartmann.com His most recent books are "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight," "Unequal Protection," "We The People," "The Edison Gene", and "What Would Jefferson Do?," in which parts of this article first appeared.

The Pilgrims of Saint Michael firmly believe that the nucleus of all evil stems from those who control the monies of the world, whom we generally refer to as the International Bankers. But one word we seldom here about, much less understand, is the Illuminati.

The Illuminati are elite men, those on the top, who control the International Bankers to control, for evil purposes, the entire world. Their agentur are bred, educated, and trained to be placed behind the scenes at all levels of government. As experts and advisers, they mould government policy so as to further the secret plans of their masters. They lure people away from God by offering them money, the world, the flesh, and the devil.

Those who direct the Illuminati are against Christ and for Satan. They always remain in the dark, unidentified, and generally unsuspected. They use all peoples to serve their diabolical purposes. They divide to conquer, supplying arms and money to both sides, instigating people to fight and kill each other, in order to be able to achieve their objectives. they foster the terrorism of atomic warfare and deliberately cause world famine. Their primary goal is to form a one world government to have complete control of the entire world, destroying all religions and governments in the process.

Recently I came across a tape entitled Ã‚Â«The History of the IlluminatiÃ‚Â» by Myron Fagan in which Mr. Fagan explains in detail what the Illuminati is, how it started, and their conspiracy to form a one world government by the end of the 20th Century. Following are excerpts taken from this tape, based on William Guy Carr's book, "Pawns in the Game". The subtitles are from the "Michael" Journal.

Behind the United States and its Constitution is a small group of men whose sole objective is to enslave the whole world and humanity in their satanic plot for a one world govenment. Now to give you a very clear picture of this satanic plot, I will go back to its beginning, back to the middle of the 18th Century, and name the men who put that plot into action.

This satanic plot was launched back in the 1760's when it first came into existence under the name of the Illuminati. This Illuminati was organized by one Adam Weishaupt who became a convert to Catholicism and later a Catholic priest. Then, at the request of the Financiers, he defected from the Catholic Church, and organized the Illuminati which was financed by the International Bankers.

Every war since then, beginning with the French Revolution, has been promoted by the Illuminati operating under various names and guises. I say under various names and guises because, after the Illuminati was exposed and became too notorious, Weishaupt and his co-conspirators began to operate under various other names.

But why did the world conspirators chose the word "Illuminati" for their satanic organization? Weishaupt himself said that the word is derived from Lucifer and means Ã‚Â«holders of the lightÃ‚Â».

The Luciferian conspiracy

Weishaupt was a Jesuit-trained professor of Canon Law, teaching in Inglecot University, when he defected from Christianity to embrace the Luciferian conspiracy. This was in 1770. He began to write out the master plan that was designed to give the Synagogue of Satan, so named by Jesus Christ, ultimate world domination so they could impose the Luciferian ideology on what would remain of the human race after the final social cataclysm by use of satanic despotism.

Weishaupt completed his task on May 1, 1776. (Communist nations continue to yearly conduct celebrations on May 1st in honor of this great event.) That was the day Weishaupt officially completed his plan which required the destruction of all existing governments and religions. That objective was to be reached by dividing the masses of people into opposing camps in ever increasing numbers on political, social, economic, and other issues, the very conditions we have in the United States today. The opposing sides were then to be armed, and incidents were to be provided which would cause them to fight and weaken themselves, gradually destroying national governments and religious institutions.

The plan of operation

The main features of the Weishaupt plan of operation required his Illuminati to do the following things to help them to accomplish their purpose:

1. Monetary and sex bribery was to be used to obtain control of men already in high places in the various levels of all governments and other fields of endeavor. Once influential persons had fallen for the lies, deceits, and temptations of the Illuminati, they were to be held in bondage by application of political and other forms of blackmail, threats of financial ruin, public exposure, and physical harm, even death to themselves and loved members of their families.

2. The Illuminati who were on the faculty of colleges and universities were to cultivate students possessing exceptional mental ability and who belonged to well-bred families with international leanings, and recommend them for special training in Internationalism. Such training was to be provided by granting scholarships, like the Rhodes Scholarship, to those selected by the Illuminati. All such scholars were to be first persuaded and then convinced that men of special talent and brains had the right to rule those less gifted on the grounds that the masses do not know what is best for them physically, mentally, and spiritually.

3. All influential people who were trapped to come under the control of the Illuminati, plus the students who had been specially educated and trained, were to be used as agents and placed behind the scenes of all governments as experts and specialists. They would advise the top executives to adopt policies which would, in the long run, serve the secret plans of the Illuminati's one world conspiracy, and bring about the destruction of the governments and religions they were elected or appointed to serve.

4. They were to obtain absolute control of the press so that all news and inforation could be slanted to convince the masses that a one world government is the only solution to our many and varied problems. They were also to own and control all the national radio and TV channels.

After reading these four points of strategy, we have to admit that our mass communications media is controlled at all levels, and that at all levels our governments are also infiltrated and controlled, just like Weishaupt had planned back in the 1700's. Unfortunately, few people are aware of this fact, which is why they make little sense out of many of the world events that take place today.

Let us now go back to the first days of the Illuminati.

Because Britain and France were the two greatest world powers in the late years of the 18th Century, Weishaupt ordered the Illuminati to foment the colonial wars, including the Revolutionary War in America, to weaken the British Empire. They were also ordered to organize the French Revolution in order to destroy the French Empire.

Weishaupt scheduled the French Revolution to start in 1789. However, in 1784, a true act of God placed the Bavarian Government in possession of evidence which proved the existence of the Illuminati. And that evidence could have saved France if they, the French Government, had not refused to believe it.

An act of God

What was this act of God? Let me explain.

It was in 1784 that Weishaupt had issued his orders for the French Revolution. A German writer named Zwack had put these orders into book form which contained the entire Illuminati story and Weishaupt's plan. A copy of this book was sent to the Illuminates in France, who were headed by Robespierre, whom Weishaupt had delegated to foment the French Revolution. The carrier was struck and killed by lightning as he rode on his way from Germany to France. The police found the subversive documents on his body, and turned them over to the proper authorities.

After a careful study of the plot, the Bavarian Government ordered the police to raid Weishaupt's newly organized lodges of the Grand Orient and homes of his most influential associates. All additional evidence thus discovered convinced the authorities that the documents were genuine copies of the conspiracy by which the Illuminati planned to use wars and revolutions to bring about the established. (Note: This is exactly in line with the United Nations plot of today.)

In 1785, the Bavarian Government outlawed the Illuminati, and closed the lodges of the Grand Orient. In 1786, they published all the details of the conspiracy, the English title of that publication being "The Original Writings of the Order and Sect of the Illuminati". Copies of the entire conspiracy were sent to all the heads of Church and State in Europe. But the power of the Illuminati was so great that this warning was ignored. Nevertheless, Ã‚Â«IlluminatiÃ‚Â» became a dirty word, and it went underground.

At the same time, Weishaupt ordered Illuminates to infiltrate into the lodges of Blue Masonry, and form their own secret societies within all secret societies. Only Masons who proved themselves internationalists, and those whose conduct proved they had defected from God, were initiated into the Illuminati.

In order to infiltrate into Masonic Lodges in Britain, Weishaupt invited John Robison over to Europe. Robison was a high degree Mason in the Scottish Rite. He was a professor of natural philosophy at Edinburgh University and secretary of The Royal Society of Edinburgh. Robison did not fall for the lie that the objective of the Illuminati was to create a benevolent dictatorship, but he kept his reaction to himself so well that he was entrusted with a copy of Weishaupt's revised conspiracy for study and safekeeping.

Because the warnings about the Illuminati were ignored, the Revolution broke out in 1789, as scheduled by Weishaupt. In order to alert other governments to their danger, Robison published, in 1789, a book entitled "Proof of a Conspiracy to Destroy All Governments and Religions", but his warnings were also ignored.

The Napoleonic Wars

The men who had directed the French Revolution decided to engage in another international plot. This time they organized the Napoleonic Wars to topple several more of the Crowned Heads of Europe.

One branch of the Financiers financed Napoleon, while another branch financed Britain, Germany, and other nations. Of course, both branches received their orders from the masterminds of the Illuminati.

Immediately after the Napolionic Wars, the Illuminati assumed that all the nations would be so desperate and so weary of wars that they would be glad for any solution. So the stooges of the Illumiati set up what they called Ã‚Â«The Congress of ViennaÃ‚Â». At this meeting they tried to create the first league of nations, their first attempted one world government. They held the theory that all the Crowned heads of the European Government were so deeply in debt to them that they would willingly or unwillingly seve as their stooges. But the Czar of Russia caught on to the plot, and completely torpedoed it. The enraged Financiers then vowed that some day they would destroy the Czar and his entire family. And this very threat was later accomplished in 1917.

We must bear in mind that the Illumianti was not set up to operate on a short-range basis. Normally, a conspirator of any type enters into a conspiracy with the expectation of achieving his objective during his own lifetime. But that was not the case with the Illuminati. True, they hoped to accomplish their objective during their lifetime but, paraphrasing "the show must go on", the Illuminati operates on the very long-range basis. Whether it will take scores of years or even centuries, they have dedicated their descendants to keep the plot going until they hope the conspiracy is achieved.

The disastrous rebuff at the congress held in Vienna by the Czar of Russia did not by any means destroy the Illuminati conspiracy; it merely forced them to adopt a new strategy. Realizing that the one world idea was, for the moment, killed, the Illuminati decided that, to keep their power, they would have to tighten their control of the money system of the European nations.

To control the economy

Earlier, the outcome of the Battle of Waterloo had been falsified. The Financiers had spread a story that Napoleon had won that battle, which brought about a panic on the stock market in England. All stocks had plumped down to practically zero. The International Bankers then bought all the stocks for virtually a penny on its dollar value, which gave them complete control of the economy of Britain and, virtually, of all Europe.

Immediately after the congress held in Vienna, the International Bankers forced Britain to set up a new bank of England, which they controlled absolutely, and which they still control to this very day.

Weishaupt died in 1830, but prior to his death, he prepared a revised version of the age-old conspiracy of the Illuminati, which, under various names, was to organize, finance, direct, and control all international organizations and groups bu working their agents into executive positions at the top.

The revolutionary program

In 1848, Karl Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto, under the direction of one group of Illuminists, while Professor Karl Ritter of Frankfurt University wrote the anti-thesis, under the direction of another group of Illuminists. the idea was that those who direct the overall conspiracy could use the differences of those two so-called ideologies to enable them to divide larger and larger members of the human race into opposing camps so that they could be armed and then brainwashed into fighting and destroying each other. And, in particular, to destroy all political and religious institutions.

The work Ritter started was continued after his death and completed by the German so-called philosopher, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche. Nietzsche helped to develop Racism and then Naziism, which was used to foment World War I and II.

In 1834, the Italian revolutionary leader, Giuseppe Mazzini, was selected by the Illuminati to direct their revolutionary program throughout the world. He served in that capacity until he died in 1872. But some years before he died, Mazzini had enticed an American general named Albert Pike into the Illuminati. Pike was fascinated by the idea of a one world government, and ultimately he became the head of this Luciferian conspiracy.

Between 1859 and 1871, Pike worked out a military blueprint for three world wars and various revolutions throughout the world which he considered would forward the conspiracy to its final stage in the 20th Century.

World wars

The First World War was to be fought so as to enable the Illuminati to destroy Czarism in Russia, as vowed by the International Bankers after the Czar had torpedoed his scheme at the congress held in Vienna, and to transform Russia into a stronghold of atheistic Communism. The differences stirred up by agents of the Illuminati between the German and British Empires would be used to foment this war. After the war would be ended, Communism was to be built up and used to destroy other governments and weaken religions.

The Second World War, when and if necessary, was to be fomented by using the controversies between fascist and political Zionists. During this war, International Communism was to be built up until it equaled in strenght that of the United Christendom. When it reached that point, it was to be contained and kept in check until required for the final social cataclysm.

The Third World War is to be fomented by using the so-called controversy agents of the Illuminati would stir up between political Zionists and the leaders of the Moslem world. That war is to be directed in such a manner that all of Islam and political Zionism, Israel, will destroy each other while, at the same time, the remaining nations, once more divided on this issue, will be forced to fight themselves into a state of complete exhaustion - physically, mentally, spiritually, and economically. The stage will then be set to put the one world government into operation.

A one world government

In the final phases of the conspiracy, the one world government is to consist of a key dictator - the head of the United Nations, the Council on Foreign Relations (the Illuminati group in the U.S.), a few billionaires, the Communists, and scientists who have proven their devotion to the great conspiracy. All others are to be integrated into a vast conglomeration of monopolized humanity, becoming total slaves of the conspiracy.

In the United States, immediately after World War I, the Illuminati set up what they called the Council on Foreign Relations, commonly referred to as the CFR. This CFR is actually the Illuminati now operating in the U.S. Its hierarchy, the mastermind control of the CFR, to a very great extent, are descendants of the original Illuminati conspirators, even though many of them have changed their names to conceal this fact.

There is a similar establishment of the Illuminati in England, operating under the name of the British Institute of International Affairs. There are similar secret Illuminati organizations in France, Germany, and other nations operating under different names. All of these organizations, including the CFR, continuously set up numerous subsidiary or front organizations that are infiltrated into every phase of the various nations affairs. But at all times, the operation of these organizations were and are masterminded and controlled by the Illuminati.

In this article we have touched only the tip of the iceberg as to what the Illuminati all consists of and of the subversive activities that it engages in. But hopefully you can now understand why we say that the nucleus of all evil stems from those who control the monies of the world. If we want to obtain true justice and peace in the world, we must first free every country from the yoke of International Finance.

In future articles, we will explain the history of the Illuminati in the United States, and how it was able to take complete control of the money system of that country without the American people even realizing what was happening.

21ST CENTURY NEW YORK STATE OF MIND ."REST IN PEACE NIGHT OWL TOM"Use Caution when reading my comments>.